Upgrading to 8800GT

[badbonez]

Hi all, this forum is great!

 

I am going to upgrade my 8400GS to an 8800GT. Currently, I have quartz extreme supported and the card seems to work fine, but a bit sluggish.

 

Here's my graphics/display

 

Whenever I upgrade the OS I always have to replace the nvidia kexts with some files I downloaded a while ago (and sorry, I cannot remember where I got them) but this is an image of the kexts I need to install:

 

I am hoping that when I upgrade to the 8800GT I will not need to replace these kexts, is that true? Can I use the vanilla kexts supplied by Apple? Or do I still need to use NVinject from http://nvinject.free.fr/?

 

Is there anything else I need to do to get my OS X to use this card properly?

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Some of my computer specs:

ASUS P5W DH

Q6600 Core2Duo

4GB RAM

nVidia 8400GS

Iatkos V4i Installation

[krrr]

interesting, i gotta do same. let us know ur experience

[MacUser2525]

Rather than typing it all again try my instructions in the thread below you need to be running 10.5.3 or better so you have the Leopard Graphic update installed for it to work.

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=122019

[badbonez]

Rather than typing it all again try my instructions in the thread below you need to be running 10.5.3 or better so you have the Leopard Graphic update installed for it to work.

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=122019

 

THanks! I will try that now. Although I do not know how to tell what my "bus routing" is - how do I determine that?

[MacUser2525]

THanks! I will try that now. Although I do not know how to tell what my "bus routing" is - how do I determine that?

 

Get the gfxutil tool I mention from Netkas's forum then in the directory you extracted the .zip to use this command below in Terminal.

 

 macuser2525s-p35-ds3r:gfxutil MacUser2525$ ./gfxutil -f display
DevicePath = PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

 

If you see the same numbers then you will be good as you have the same as mine if not then you need to copy the long string of numbers contained in the <key>device-properties</key> <string>.......</string> section to an xml file convert to text to replace the PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0) with your numbers then convert back to xml take those numbers and put in the com.Boot file the directions for doing this are in the gfxutil thread on the forum I link to in the other thread.

[badbonez]

Get the gfxutil tool I mention from Netkas's forum then in the directory you extracted the .zip to use this command below in Terminal.

 

 macuser2525s-p35-ds3r:gfxutil MacUser2525$ ./gfxutil -f display
DevicePath = PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

 

If you see the same numbers then you will be good as you have the same as mine if not then you need to copy the long string of numbers contained in the <key>device-properties</key> <string>.......</string> section to an xml file convert to text to replace the PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0) with your numbers then convert back to xml take those numbers and put in the com.Boot file the directions for doing this are in the gfxutil thread on the forum I link to in the other thread.

 

Unfortunately it did not work. When I loaded with that .plist it did not recognize the card at all.

 

When I use the gfx util it comes up as

DevicePath = PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

 

However, there were no instructions wtih the gfxutil I found on a thread after doing a search on that website. That link you gave just pointed to the general forum listing, not a specific thread. So as far as converting to xml and back, I'm a little lost.

 

I'll check into this tomorrow, it's getting late here. Thanks again for your help!

[badbonez]

Alright, I've gone to http://forum.netkas.org/index.php?topic=222.0 to learn about creating nVidia EFI strings and have created a hex file with my hardware config and edited the com.apple.boot.plist using that.. Do I need to remove nvinject? How do I get the original apple video kexts back? Do I have to reinstall Leopard?

 

Luckily, I have two installs of Leopard (using Iatkos V4i) and one is just for this sort of experimenting. So I am going to boot it up with the com.apple.boot.plist first and see what happens. Hopefully it will recognize the card - but will CI and QE be supported? Stay tuned...

[badbonez]

Stay tuned...

 

Success!

 

 

As mentioned in the previous post I changed the hex string in apple.com.boot.plist to fit my computer, removed nVinject and it worked.

 

The only thing is that I am still using the 10.5.2 kexts I picked up from here: http://scottdangel.com/blog/?page_id=20

 

How would I install the current Apple kexts without reinstalling the entire system? Or does it really matter?

 

Thanks again!

 

Now if I could only get my video card to wake from sleep!

[MacUser2525]

Success!

 

 

As mentioned in the previous post I changed the hex string in apple.com.boot.plist to fit my computer, removed nVinject and it worked.

 

The only thing is that I am still using the 10.5.2 kexts I picked up from here: http://scottdangel.com/blog/?page_id=20

 

How would I install the current Apple kexts without reinstalling the entire system? Or does it really matter?

 

Thanks again!

 

Now if I could only get my video card to wake from sleep!

 

Good to see you got it going I would not count on sleep working mine will go to sleep just fine however when it wakes I can move the mouse but never can I click on anything to run programs, shutdown .... For the original .kext since I see you are smart enough to have a test partition to play with you could go to the Apple web site and download the Combo update for 10.5.4 open it by double clicking then choose the destination as your test partition (you want to do this while running on your good install) let it install then make sure you delete the AppleIntelCPUManagement.kext before rebooting into the test install if everything goes well then from the test install repeat the procedure for your good install.

 

Edit: Do you need to know how to make sure the caches are rebuilt when doing something like this? If so let me know and I will post the instructions.

 

Edit2: Never mind I see you posted in another thread where I have posted these steps.

[badbonez]

Good to see you got it going I would not count on sleep working mine will go to sleep just fine however when it wakes I can move the mouse but never can I click on anything to run programs, shutdown ....

 

When I use Sleep the computer will power down and when I hit the space bar it will power up but the monitor does not come on, I assume that the display adapter does not wake. I'm not sure I care tho, I usually just shut down. But in the interest of completeness I am poking around for a solution.

 

 

For the original .kext since I see you are smart enough to have a test partition to play with you could go to the Apple web site and download the Combo update for 10.5.4 open it by double clicking then choose the destination as your test partition (you want to do this while running on your good install) let it install then make sure you delete the AppleIntelCPUManagement.kext before rebooting into the test install if everything goes well then from the test install repeat the procedure for your good install.

 

Is there any benefit to do this? Everything seems to run fine now. But when the next update comes along I won't need to worry about replacing kexts, right? What about the com.apple.boot.plist file? Will that need to be reinstalled with every update?

 

Thanks again for your help! Hope others get something from this as well.

[MacUser2525]

When I use Sleep the computer will power down and when I hit the space bar it will power up but the monitor does not come on, I assume that the display adapter does not wake. I'm not sure I care tho, I usually just shut down. But in the interest of completeness I am poking around for a solution.

 

Most likely the idea that is happening I've seen people who say they have it all working so it is possible to do, that said I've never got it to work so its hit and miss if you can get it going.

 

 

 

Is there any benefit to do this? Everything seems to run fine now. But when the next update comes along I won't need to worry about replacing kexts, right? What about the com.apple.boot.plist file? Will that need to be reinstalled with every update?

 

Thanks again for your help! Hope others get something from this as well.

 

Your welcome if your machine is running fine as is then you may not want to change anything but for updates even this combo one I suggested there is always the chance, even likely, that some .kext that you have modified will be replaced with the original Apple version. So yes you do have to worry about that doing upgrades I like you have a spare partition (external drive actually) that is used for just this purpose so I can test the upgrade to see if it breaks anything I have changed. For the com.Boot that file is a user/system admin configuration file it should never be changed by an OS X update.